The Uses of History: Four Narratives of the Pequot War
Blaine T. Browne
Broward Community College
From the outset of their endeavor in the New World, the Puritan settlers of New England held a special concept of history and their place in it. The Puritan exegesis held that history was more than a mere concatenation of mundane occurrences driven by material forces. In the Puritan mind, history transcended temporal causality and reflected the particular providences of God. A historical interpretation of these providences provided a framework for human activity, a means of analyzing the spiritual progress of man. Providential history assigned to the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay a mission of singular importance, which governor John Winthrop was quick to declare. “We have taken out a Commission, the Lord hath given us leave to draw our own Articles,” Winthrop wrote in 1630. “We shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” The price of betraying such a mission would be high, however. “If we neglect the observation of these articles,” the new governor warned,” the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us…and make us known the price of the breach of such a Covenant.”[1]
Holding this providential view of history, the Puritan colonists of New England were not averse to drawing an analogy between themselves and the ancient nation of Israel. Cast into the North American wilderness where the Anti-Christ was believed to lurk, they could expect vexing trials.[2] The trials were not long in coming. In the mid-1630s, the controversies over religious dissidents Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams shook the nascent Bay colony. This was , however, a mere portent of future afflictions, always a sign of the Almighty’s displeasure. In 1637, the outbreak of hostilities with a nearby Indian tribe, the Pequots, provided the settlers with the most striking and usable metaphor for their American experience. Indian warfare offered the opportunity to examine the workings of Providence within the New World context. Four contemporary narratives of the Pequot War of 1637 display a hermeneutic quality which perfectly reflects the Puritan concept of providential history. These histories of the war not only offer an explanation for the conflict in terms of God’s just punishment upon wayward Puritans, but also vindicate the sometimes wantonly brutal methods of the Puritan soldiers who defeated the Pequots. These narratives, all but one written by participants in the war, established a model for justifying harsh treatment of native Americans during the period in which the English established hegemony in the New England region.
The sanguinary conflict known as the Pequot War had its roots in the tenuous relation between the New England colonists and the Pequots, a tribe situated in southeastern Connecticut between the Thames and Pawcatuck Rivers. The war grew most immediately out of the June 1636 murder of Captain John Oldham by the Block Island Indians. The Massachusetts Bay colony authorities dispatched a military force to exact punishment on these Indians and to accost the Pequots, who were rumored to be sheltering Indians who had killed Captain John Stone in 1634. It is unclear as to why the Bay government should have at this point suddenly demanded vengeance for the murder of the long-dead and little-mourned Stone, who was notorious for his outrageous behavior and furthermore, a Virginian.[3] Nevertheless, the punitive expedition looted and burned an Indian encampment on Block Island before heading down the Connecticut River to Fort Saybrook, from which further operations were staged. The only effect of the haphazard English raids was to further enrage the Pequots, who laid siege to Fort Saybrook once the Massachusetts contingent had departed the area. The Pequots confined themselves to intermittent guerilla warfare until April 1637 when “a large body of Indian warriors” descended on the settlement at Wethersfield, killing nine settlers and destroying “considerable” property. This moved the General Court at Hartford to a formal declaration of war on May 1. In June, a force of ninety Connecticut soldiers and several hundred Narragansett Indian allies set out by boat and overland from Fort Saybrook to attack a Pequot fort on the Mystic River. The dawn surprise attack on the sleeping Indians resulted in a terrible massacre in which six to seven hundred Pequots were shot, stabbed and burned to death. Several minor engagements followed, but the Pequots were overwhelmed. Their power broken, they faced virtual extermination at the hands of the English and their Indian allies. The two hundred Pequot survivors were given over to friendly Indians as slaves. This first Puritan conquest, having cost an estimated fifteen hundred lives, set a pattern for future conflicts.[4]
Clearly, the Puritan colonists prosecuted the war in a brutal and final manner, “in order that the name of the Pequots should become extinct.”[5] The indiscriminate brutality of the English amazed even their Indian allies, who protested that the English manner of fighting “was too furious and slays too many men.”[6] Despite the overwhelming evidence of unrestrained savagery on the part of the colonists, there is little to indicate that there was any regret over their part in the Pequot War. To the contrary, an examination of the narratives of the war suggests that the Puritans perceived the causes, prosecution and outcome of the conflict in a manner consistent with their concept of providential history. The theme central to all four narratives is the providential character of events. The war itself is cast as a struggle between good and evil, with the Indians as instruments of satanic will, unleashed upon the colonists as a form chastisement. The ultimate outcome of the struggle was predetermined in the Puritan mind. The Puritan exegesis necessitated that the saints overcome the forces of evil if they were to demonstrate the progress of God’s plan.
Puritan literature, Perry Miller tells us, had an innately utilitarian quality.[7] The narratives of the Pequot War reflect this functional and didactic dimension on several levels. They serve as sermon-narratives, designed to lead the reader to the correct interpretation of events. Several reflect the traditional structure of the Puritan sermon, progressing through text, doctrine, exposition and application. The moral lessons to be drawn from the contemporary accounts of John Underhill, Philip Vincent, John Mason and Lion Gardiner are evident. Their accounts reflect a common theme of providential history by depicting Indian war as an affliction, the Indians as instruments of dark forces and the Puritan soldiers as the ultimately triumphant agents of God’s wrath. On another more secular level, the narratives reflect dissensions among the colonists and differing interpretations of their place in the New World wilderness. Primarily, however, the narratives serve to justify Puritan behavior in an alien environment. To those few who might have difficulty in reconciling professions of Christian brotherhood with the indiscriminate slaughter of Indians, the narratives served as a comforting exposition of the Puritan mission in the New Israel.
Captain John Underhill’s Newes from America; or A New and Experimental Discoverie of New England was published only shortly after the conclusion of the war in 1638. A professional soldier who once served with the Dutch, Underhill came to Boston in 1630, where he began a checkered career. His military exploits included participation in both the attack on Block Island and the subsequent massacre at Fort Mystic. Returning to Boston expecting a hero’s welcome, Underhill discovered instead that his antinomian sympathies and petition on behalf of religious dissident John Wheelwright had earned him the clear displeasure of the General Court. In November 1637 he was disfranchised and discharged from military service. Only a year later Underhill was banished for making contemptuous speeches about the authorities. Later tried for adultery and excommunicated, Underhill returned to service for the Dutch and died in 1672.[8]
Despite Underhill’s long history of disputes with Bay political and religious authorities, his account of the war contains the essential elements of providential history. Underhill introduces his account as “a true relation of the New England Wars against the Block Islanders, and that insolent and barbarous nation called the Pequots, who, by the sword of God, and a few feeble instruments, soldiers not accustomed to war, were drove out of their country and slain by the sword.”[9] To Underhill, the cause of the war is obvious. The Pequots were goaded to hostilities because “the old serpent, according to his first malice, stirred them up against the church of Christ.” “So insolent were these wicked imps grown,” wrote Underhill, “that like the devil, their commander, they run up and down as roaring lions, compassing all the corners of the country for a prey, seeking whom they might devour.” The Biblical image of the lion threatening the children of Israel is recurrent in Underhill’s narrative. It is also noteworthy that Underhill describes the Indians’ relation to the devil in military terms—he is their “commander.” The Pequot warriors, “these devil’s instruments,” are thus equated with the numerous legions of the devil. This belief was evidently cause for some concern about the loyalty of the colonists’ Indian allies. Underhill recounts hearing Captain John Mason pray that God “manifest one pledge of thy love, that may confirm us the fidelity of these Indians.” Underhill records that “his prayer was granted…that those Indians had brought in five Pequot heads, one prisoner and one mortally wounded…which gave them all occasion to rejoice and be thankful to God.”[10]
If the devil commanded the Pequots, Underhill was equally certain that God directed the actions of the English troops. In describing the assault on Fort Mystic, he ascribes the accuracy of a preliminary volley of musket shot to divine guidance. “So remarkable it did appear to us,” he wrote, “ as we could not admire at the providence of God at it, that soldiers so inexpert in the use of arms, should give so complete a volley, as though the finger of God had touched both match and flint.” Underhill’s account of the assault on the Pequot encampment and his justification for the slaughter of mostly Indian women and children are equally revealing. First he describes the massacre of those who fled the burning fort. The panicking Indians were “received and entertained with the point of the sword. Down fell men, women and children…Great and Doleful was the bloody sight to the view of young soldiers that had never been in war, to see so many souls lie gasping on the ground, so thick in some places that you could hardly pass along.” Anticipating objections by the squeamish, Underhill offered his justification for the deadly scope of the attack:
It may be demanded, Why should you be so furious? (As some have said). Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But I would refer you to David’s war….Sometimes the Scriptures declareth women and children must perish with their parents. Sometimes the case alters; but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.[11] The moral is made obvious. The Pequots “sinned against God and man” and thus suffered the wrath of God through his worldly instruments, the Puritans.
Underhill relates yet another lesson to be learned from the war, this one directed towards his fellow saints. This concerns two girls who had been captured by the Pequots. They were not harmed, but “the Indians carried them from place to place, and showed them their forts and curious wigwams and houses and encouraged them to be merry.” Besides soliciting the girls to “uncleanness” the Indians sought to induce them to accept their way of life. But, noted Underhill, “ the poor souls, as Israel, could not frame themselves to any delight or mirth under so strange a king.” Instead, the captives meditated upon what wrong they might have done to deserve such an affliction and came to the conclusion that they had shown insufficient trust in God. They then resolved that they would “not fear what man can do to me, knowing God to be above man.” Underhill then applies the lesson:
Better a prison sometimes and a Christ, than liberty without him. Better in a fiery furnace with the presence of Christ, than in a kingly palace without him. Better in the lion’s den, in the midst of all the roaring lions and with Christ, than in a downy bed with wife and children without Christ.[12]
The question of trial and affliction had personal significance for Underhill. As an antinomian, he had endured accusations by orthodox leaders that he was a source of contention in the colony. Here his narrative becomes a forum for religious controversy. Underhill suggests that dissensions are but another of God’s trials and again draws the parallel with Israel: “…as he said to Israel of old—I did it to prove you, and to see what was in your hearts.” He concludes with an ominous note to his readers: “you that intend to go to New England, fear not a little trouble.”[13]
Whatever his misgivings, Underhill was an advocate of frontier settlement and the one major digression his account takes is to extol New England’s virtues. “The truth is,” he suddenly interjects, “I want time to set forth the excellence of the whole country.”[14] The digression is ironic, coming as it does between descriptions of Indian atrocities and the aforementioned fiery massacre. But Underhill was first a professional soldier, more skilled in the arts of warfare than in literary craft. His Newes from America served a dual purpose; it was at once a vindication of colonial actions and a forum for the unpopular antinomian viewpoint. Its early publication hints at Underhill’s urgent concern for the issues involved.
Philip Vincent’s A True Relation of the Late Battell Fought in New England between the English and the Pequet Savages appeared in 1638, partly in reply to Underhill’s account. Vincent was a minister, traveler and entrepreneur who was apparently in new England in 1637, but did not participate in the Pequot War. Little is known of his life, though he evidently returned to Europe after the war. As Vincent’s account is a response to Underhill’s history, it is somewhat more limited in function. Vincent does not concern himself so much with a providential interpretation of events as he does with disputing some of Underhill’s contentions. One minor dispute involved Underhill’s conduct during the attack on Fort Mystic, which Vincent portrayed as cowardly. The more significant clash involved Underhill’s antinomianism and conflicting views on the course of settlement in New England.[15]
Philip Vincent presents the war as dramatic narrative as much as providential history. After beginning his account with a brief description of New England, Vincent seems anxious to proceed. “This is the stage,” he writes, “let us in a word see the actors.” Upon concluding his account of the war, Vincent declares, “I have done with this tragic scene, whose catastrophe ended in triumph.”[16] While Vincent never pointedly portrays the course of events as divinely ordained, he does offer some seemingly contradictory observations about the origins of the conflict. His initial evaluation of the Indians is almost objective and , in the context, even enlightened. “Their outsides say they are men, their actions say they are reasonable,” he concedes. “Only art and grace have given us that perfection which they yet want., but may perhaps be as capable thereof as we.” Yet this sympathetic view of Indian nature is suddenly complicated by subsequent thoughts expressed in a remarkable passage:
But nature, heaven’s daughter, and the immediate character of that divine power, as by her light she hath taught us wisdom, for our own defense, so by her fire she hath made us fierce, injurious, revengeful and ingenious in the device of means for the offense of those We take to be our enemies….We have in us a mixture of all the elements, and fire is predominant when the humors are agitated. All motion causeth Heat; all provocation moveth choler; and choler inflamed becometh a Phrensy, a fury, especially in barbarous and cruel natures. These things are conspicuous in the inhabitants of New England.[17]
Presuming that Vincent’s “inhabitants” refers to the Pequots, his theory of aggression is congruent with his attitudes towards that tribe. Invariably described in aggressive terms, the Pequots are characterized as “a stately, warlike people…capable of great cruelty.” Indeed, Vincent goes on to suggest that the Pequots can only be dealt with in a forceful manner. Recalling the Virginia Indian War of 1622, he concludes, “The long forbearance and too much lenity of the English towards the Virginia savages, had like to have been the destruction of the entire plantation. These barbarians, ever treacherous, abuse the goodness of those that condescend their rudeness and imperfections.” Thus Vincent offers a justification for the eradication of a troublesome presence: “Mercy mars all sometimes, severe justice must now and then take its place.”[18]
There is another, perhaps less conscious aspect to Vincent’s contention that “all motion causeth heat,” and it applies to a different group of “inhabitants of New England.” It must have been evident to Vincent in the conduct of the English soldiers that “fire is predominant when the humors are agitated.” The fiery massacre at Fort Mystic could aptly be described as the work of men caught up in “a phrensy, a fury.” The bloodshed during the war had “hardened the hearts of the English.” This is not to say that Vincent felt that an injustice had been done; on the contrary, he exulted in the subjugation of the Pequots and triumphantly declared that “the English shall have those brutes as their servants, either willing or of necessity, and docible enough, if not obsequious.”[19]
What appalled Vincent was the degenerative effect that “nature” seemed to have on frontier Englishmen. As historian Richard Slotkin has noted, Vincent opposed the type of unmanaged frontier expansion that Underhill was so enthusiastic about.[20] Thus Vincent posts a warning to his readers: “The transcribing of all colonies is chargeable fittest for the princes or states to undertake. Their first beginnings are full of casualty and danger….They must be well grounded, well followed and managed with great stocks of money, by men of resolution, that will not be daunted by ordinary accidents.”[21] Vincent never disputes the providential view posited by Underhill. His narrative suggests, however, that there are dark forces made manifest in the course of the Pequot War which Underhill’s account fails to consider. For Vincent, the frontier wilderness remains an unknown quantity not to be trifled with.
Perhaps the most striking providential history to come out of the Pequot War is John Mason’s A Brief History of the Pequot War. Mason, born in England, received military training in the Netherlands before arriving in New England in 1630. It was Mason who led the Connecticut forces in the attack on the Pequot fort on the Mystic River. As an early biographer noted, Mason was given “the Principal Ensign of Martial Power, to Lead the Armies and Fight the Battles of the Lord and His People.”[22] Mason evidently agreed with this characterization. He was asked by the Connecticut General Court in 1656 to write an account of the war and his Brief History was first published in 1677 by Increase Mather, who erroneously ascribed it to a Connecticut official by the name of John Allwyn.[23] Mason’s narrative is the epitome of providential history and served as a model for Puritan accounts of King Philip’s War in 1675, which continued the tradition of justifying Puritan conquests as the realization of divine will.
Characteristically, Mason prefaced his history with a note “To the Judicious Reader,” in which he carefully explains his motivations and his conception of history. Mason on was intent upon settling the quarrel begun by Underhill and Vincent and observed accordingly: “And although some may think they have Wrote in high Stile and done some notable thing, yet in my opinion they have not spoken truly in some particulars, and in general to little purpose.” Continuing in an aphoristic manner, Mason declares “If Truth be wanting in History, it proves but a fruitless Discourse.” In a compelling analogy, he observes, “When the Bones are separated from a living creature, it becomes unserviceable. So a History, if you take away Order and Truth, the rest will prove to be but vain Narration.” In keeping with Puritan literary form, Mason offers his purpose: “I shall, therefore, God Helping, endeavor not so much to stir up the Affections of Men, as to declare in Truth and Plainness the Actions and Doings of Men.”[24]
Mason’s Brief History is however primarily concerned with men acting as the instruments of God. Significantly, his account loosely follows the structure of the Puritan sermon. On the title page is printed one of the Psalms, which he takes as his text:
We have heard with our ears, O God, our Fathers have told us, what work Thou didst in their Days, in the times of old; How Thou didst drive out the Heathen, with Thy Hand, and plantest Them: how Thou did afflict the People and cast Them out. For they got not the Land in Possession by their own Sword, neither did their own Arm save them; but Thy right Hand, and thine Arm, and the Light of Thy Countenance, because Thou hadst a favor unto Them.[25]
With this as his text, Mason chronicles a war which comes as an affliction and warning to the unrepentant, and a victory of the Puritan instruments of God’s judgment over the heathen Pequots. The doctrine and exposition sections of Mason’s “sermon” are not well-organized, but his intention is evident. The sermon-narrative is history offered as justification of a theological perspective and here Mason succeeds admirably. Here the experience of Indian warfare is offered as a metaphor for the American experience.[26]
“What shall I say?” asks Mason. “God led his people through many Difficulties and Turnings; yet by more than an ordinary hand of providence he brought them to Canaan at last.” This perspective characterizes Mason’s interpretation of the war. The attack on and burning of Fort Mystic was the principal action Mason participated in and his narrative focuses on the events which transpired there. His account of the destruction of the fort and its inhabitants is apocalyptic; Mason was clearly impressed by the fiery spectacle. Among the first to break into the fort, Mason was angered by the sight of several men “with their swords pointed to the ground” and proceeded to upbraid those who faltered, realizing that “we should never kill them after that manner.” It was Mason who, at the height of the battle, determined “We must burn them” and proceeded to torch the Pequots’ dwellings. As the flames spread, he recounts, “the Indians ran as men most dreadfully amazed.” Here Mason characterizes his actions as those of an agent of God’s wrath, seeing in the results “A dreadful Terror…the Almighty let fall upon their spirits.”[27] The incendiary consequences of his action moved Mason to rhapsodize about the just judgment of God on the hapless Pequots:” Thus were the Stout Hearted spoiled, having slept their last Sleep, and none of their Men could find their Hands; thus did The Lord judge among the heathen, filling the place with Dead Bodies!”[28]
Herein contained is a lesson of dual significance. Mason presents a religious justification for the incineration of several hundred Indians and simultaneously offers the tale as a reminder to the prideful and wicked that divine wrath cannot be put off. While the Puritan soldiers served as the tools of God’s punishment in this case, the implication is that but for God’s mercy, the Pequots might well have triumphed. While the war may have been initiated as a manifestation of heavenly displeasure with the colonists, the balance in this instance was tipped in their favor. This last minute reprieve came when a large body of Pequot warriors gathered at Fort Mystic shortly before the colonists’ assault, thus making their destruction all the more convenient, as Mason duly noted: “ the Mischief they intended to us came upon their own pate: They were taken in their own snare and we through mercy escaped.”[29] Thus, again was the outcome of the Pequot War determined by Providence. Mason describes the subsequent operations of minor nature and then his return to Fort Saybrook “where we were entertained with great triumph and Rejoycing and Praising God.” By way of application, Mason recounted what had occurred:“ thus God was seen in the Mount, Crushing his proud Enemies and the Enemies of his People…burning them up in the Fire of his Wrath, and dunging the ground with their Flesh: It was the Lord’s doings, and it is marvelous in our Eyes!” The massacre at Fort Mystic effectively finished the Pequots and Mason drew predicable conclusions about the outcome: “Thus the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the Hinder Parts, and to give us their Land for an inheritance.”[30]
For the edification of the more obtuse reader, Mason offers “a word or two by way of comment.” He recounts “two or three special Providences” which occurred during the war, most notably incidents in which soldiers were preserved from probably fatal wounds. In one case, a Pequot arrow failed to pierce a man’s neckerchief, while another was spared a penetrating wound by “a hard piece of cheese.” “Was not the Finger of God in all this?” Mason asserts. “The Lord hath done great Things for us among the heathen, whereof we are glad. Praise ye the Lord!”[31]
Though a soldier by profession, Mason was clearly capable of composing an effective sermon-narrative. His Brief History displays little that could be deemed personal style, save for a perhaps unconscious effort at humor, when he refers to a group of Indian prisoners “who we intended to have made shorter by the Head.”[32] Otherwise, his narrative conforms to the relatively austere style of the Puritan sermon. In stark contrast is Lion Gardiner’s Relation of the Pequot Warres, which went unpublished until 1833. Gardiner too was a professional soldier, arriving in New England in 1635 to erect and command the fort at Saybrook. His narrative is in a much different vein than those of Underhill, Vincent and Mason. First a soldier, Gardiner offers a different perspective on the war, not eschewing criticism of policies he deemed reprehensible and largely subordinating the providential element of history to a factual accounting of events.[33]
Gardiner was aware of the controversy surrounding the Pequot War when he undertook his narrative in 1660 at the behest of friends. In his introduction, he concedes that his account may not be well-received by all:
I have sent you a piece of timber scored and forehewed unfit to join any handsome piece of work, but seeing I have done the hardest work, you must get somebody to chip and smooth it lest the splinters should prick some men’s fingers, for the truth must not be spoken at all times, though to my knowledge I have written nothing but the truth, and you may take out or put in what you please, or if you will, may throw it all into the fire; but I think you may let the Governor and Major Mason see it.[34]
As this marvelous apologia suggests, Gardiner was aware of the volatile potential of the criticisms in his Relation. Stationed at the furthest edge of the colonial defense perimeter and isolated deep in the wilderness, Gardiner did not take a salutary view of the manner in which the conflict was precipitated. Posted at the mouth of the Connecticut River with a small body of settlers, Gardiner was irritated at the willingness of the Boston authorities to provoke a war from a place of safety. Those in the Bay colony would be secure, he complained, “but myself, with these few, you will leave at the stake to be roasted, or for hunger to be starved.” Gardiner also believed that the long-forgotten death of Captain Stone was a flimsy pretext for war: “if they will make war now for a Virginian and expose us to the Indians, whose mercies are cruelties, they, I say, they love Virginians better then us.” Leftenant Gardiner saw in the Bay government’s demand for the immediate improvement of his post’s defense capabilities a mistaken priority. “I thought no foreign potent enemy would do them any hurt, but one that was near,” he wrote. “They asked me who that was and I said it was Captain Hunger that threatened them most.”[35] Gardiner then offers a simile: “War is like a three-footed stool, want one foot and down comes all; and these three feet are men, victuals and munition.”[36]
Gardiner’s apprehensions proved well founded, for in the midst of growing Indian hostility, the force including Underhill arrived at Saybrook after the attack on Block Island. Gardiner’s reception was cool, but his words were hot. “You come hither to raise these wasps about my ears, “ he complained, “ and then you will take wing and flee away.” Still concerned primarily with securing provisions, Gardiner taunted Underhill’s men as they made ready to march against the Pequots. “Sirs, seeing you will go, I pray you, if you don’t load your barks with Pequots, load them with corn.” After a few indecisive skirmishes with the Indians, the Bostonians left the area, prompting Gardiner to note in disgust that “the Bay-men killed not a man.” From this point, his narrative presents a sobering account of life at Fort Saybrook in the months before the outbreak of general hostilities. His warnings to settlers to remain near the fort went unheeded. Some settlers were captured and “tormented,” while another was “roasted alive.” Gardiner’s impatience with the complacence of the Bay government is evident in his account of finding “the body of one man shot through, the arrow going in at the right side, the head sticking fast, half through a rib on the left side. Outraged, Gardiner “took out and cleansed [the arrowhead] and presumed to send it to the Bay, because they said that the arrows of the Indians were of no force.”[37]
Gardiner remains surprisingly nonjudgmental in his depiction of the Indians. Wounded himself in an ambush, he never refers to the Pequots in a deprecatory manner, though he was quite capable of dealing with them ruthlessly. He relates an incident in which a group of Indians sought to confer with him outside the fort. “Then they asked if we did use to kill women and children,” he recounted. His ominous response was “they should see that hereafter.” Gardiner may not have seen the Indians in a strictly demonic light, but neither did he display much sympathy for them. In an addendum to his story, he writes “now to the comedy” and proceeds to relate a series of cruel “pranks” which were played on the Indians besieging Saybrook. The most notable “pretty prank” involved the construction of a “booby trap” made of “three great doors which were bored full of holes and driven full of long nails, as sharp as awl blades.” These were placed on the ground around the fort in anticipation of night-prowling Indians. “They came as they did before,” Gardiner notes gleefully, “and found the way a little too sharp for them; and as they skipped from one they trod upon another, and left the nails and doors dyed with their blood, which you know we saw the next morning, laughing at it.”[38]
While Gardiner indulged his humor at the Indians’ expense, he did not present the same providential view of the war that other chroniclers did. His simple and unassuming text reflects a greater concern for temporal considerations. For Gardiner there were lessons to be learned from the Pequot War, but they were not of the cosmic variety. Rather, he saw in the war an example of what imprudent and ill-considered policies could cause; in this case, an ill-timed offensive against an enemy who was destroyed only due to fortuitous circumstances. Thus Gardiner felt compelled to warn his readers:
…thus far of the Pequot War, which has been but a comedy in comparison of the tragedies which hath been threatened since, and may come yet, if God does not open the eyes, ears and hearts of some that I think are willfully deaf and blind…Oh! Woe be to the pride and security which hath been the ruin of many nations, as woeful experience has proved.
Gardiner feared a renewed Indian alliance against the English that “would destroy us, man and mother’s son.” “This I have informed the Governor of these parts,” he lamented,” but all in vain… and thus we may be sure that the fattest of the flock are like to go first, if not altogether, and then it will be too late.” Gardiner wrote some fifteen years before King Philip’s War ravaged New England, but he was remarkably prophetic. For him, the Indian war narrative served primarily as a warning against the complacency he saw besetting New England. Providential history was secondary to the practical need for security. In a final gloomy peroration, evidently informed by contemporary events, Gardiner laments:
And now I am old, I would fain die a natural death, or like a soldier in the field with honor, and not to have a sharp stake set in the ground, and thrust into my fundament, and to have my skin flayed off piecemeal, and cut in bits and pieces, and my flesh roasted and thrust down my throat, as these people have done, and I know will be done to the chiefest in the country by the hundreds, if God should deliver us into their hands.[39]
Ultimately, these narratives illustrate the diverse uses of history. Gardiner’s Relation of the Pequot Warres is probably least representative of traditional Puritan historical writing in the seventeenth century. Gardiner was first a military man, however, and viewed events primarily from that perspective. John Mason and John Underhill were also military men, but subordinated that aspect of themselves to their identity as Puritans. Together with Philip Vincent, they composed narrative forms which helped lay the foundations for a Puritan literary tradition in North America. The tradition of providential history was continued by later Puritan historians and the Indian war narrative became one of the most effective vehicles for providential history, persisting through several decades.[40] A generation after the Pequot War, Increase Mather, writing of the climax of the assault on Fort Mystic, could still describe the destruction of the Pequots in terms reminiscent of Mason’s: “God damned them above ground, when they lay frying in the fire that was kindled upon their houses, and making horrible outcries.”[41] Perhaps the most eloquent testimony to the enduring tradition of providential history may be seen in Cotton Mather’s definitive ecclesiastical history of New England, Magnalia Christi Americana. Drawn from the tradition established by the Pequot War narratives, Mather’s interpretation of the conflict reflects a perfect Puritan synthesis of providence and history:
These parts were covered with nations of barbarous Indians and infidels, in whom “the prince of the power of the air” did work in a spirit; nor could it be expected that nations of witches, whose whole religion was the most explicit sort of devil-worship, should not be acted by the devil to engage in some early and bloody action, for the extinction of a plantation so contrary to his interests as that of new England was…The infant colonies of New England, finding themselves necessitated into the crushing of serpents, unanimously resolved that with the assistance of Heaven, they would root this “nest of serpents” out of the world.[42]
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[1]John Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity,” in Winthrop Papers, Vol. II (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1931.
[2]See Peter N. Carroll, Puritanism and the Wilderness (New York: Columbia University press, 1969, 11.
[3]Stone was an unscrupulous trader whose death was little mourned in Boston. An arrogant and immoral man by Puritan standards, Stone was once brought before Justice Roger Ludlow on charges of adultery. Stone did not help his case by addressing Ludlow as “Just Ass.” See Edmund Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1958), 97. For a possible explanation of the use of Stone’s death as a pretext for a war against the Pequots, see Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America (New York: Norton, 1975), 177–227.
[4]John W. DeForest, History of the Indians of Connecticut (Hamden:Conn.: Archon Books, 1964), 85–108.
[5]Lion Gardiner, Relation of the Pequot Warres in Charles Orr, editor, The Pequot War, (Cleveland:Helman Taylor Co., 1897), 120.
[6]John Underhill, Newes from America in Orr, the Pequot War, 84.
[7]See Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, editors, The Puritans (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), Vol. I, 64–79.
[8]Dictionary of American Biography, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), VI, 110–11.
[9]Underhill, 49.
[10]Underhill, 67, 69.
[11]Underhill, 78;81.
[12]Ibid, 72–73.
[13]Ibid, 74;76
[14]Ibid, 64.
[15]See Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence, )Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 70.
[16]Philip Vincent, A True Relation of the Recent Batell Fought in New England.. In Charles Orr, editor, The Pequot War, 97;108.
[17] Ibid, 98–99.
[18]Ibid, 103.
[19]Ibid, 110.
[20]See Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence, 72–73.
[21]Vincent, 108.
[22]Thomas Prince, introduction to John Mason, A Brief History of the Pequot War in Orr, The Pequot War, 8.
[23]Dictionary of American Biography VI, 367.
[24]Mason, Brief History, 15.
[25]Ibid, 1.
[26]See Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence, 67.
[27]Mason, 23; 28–29.
[28]Ibid, 30.
[29]Ibid, 30.
[30]Ibid, 35;44.
[31]Ibid, 45–46.
[32]Ibid, 42.
[33]Dictionary of American Biography, IV, 138.
[34]Gardiner, 121.
[35]Ibid, 123–24.
[36]Ibid, 124.
[37]Ibid, 128–30.
[38]Ibid, 148–49.
[39]Ibid, 139–40.
[40]Indian captivity narratives served a similar function, offering lessons in faith and humility. For an impressive contemporary interpretation, see John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York: Vintage, 1994).
[41]Increase Mather, A Relation of the Troubles which have Happened in New England (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 46.
[42]Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana II (New York: Russell & Russell, 1967), 553.